Chapter 3 - The Broken Rabbit and the Brown Bottle
That evening, the mansion was silent once more.
After putting Lily to bed in our small apartment above the staff laundry room, I brought her torn cloth rabbit down to the small office off the main kitchen. I set up my sewing kit—a small tin containing needles, spools of colored thread, and a small pair of silver scissors—under the warm glow of a desk lamp.
I sat down and carefully examined the tear in the rabbit’s foot.
The cotton fabric had frayed along the seam where Marco’s cufflink had caught it. As I pulled the tear open slightly to tuck the yellow foam stuffing back inside, my fingers brushed against something hard nestled deep within the stuffing at the center of the toy.
I stopped.
"What is that?" I muttered to myself.
I had bought this cloth rabbit at a thrift shop in Richmond when Lily was six months old. It was an old, handmade stuffed animal, soft and washed dozens of times. I had never felt anything hard inside its body before.
Using the silver tweezers from my sewing kit, I carefully reached inside the tear, probing past the soft foam. My tweezers pinched onto a small, thin object.
Slowly, I pulled it out into the lamp light.
It was a flat, round plastic disc, no larger than a nickel, encased in a clear, water-resistant silicone sleeve. On one side of the disc was a microscopic battery and a small, copper coil circuit board.
It was a listening device. A bug.
My heart stopped. The blood turned to ice in my veins.
I stared at the tiny device resting on the palm of my hand, my breath hitching in my throat. How had a military-grade surveillance bug gotten inside my daughter’s stuffed toy?
My mind raced backward through time. The thrift store... no, that was impossible. The bug was clean, modern, and undamaged.
Then, the realization hit me like a physical blow.
Six months ago. Shortly after I started working at the estate. Lily had left her rabbit on the sofa in the main drawing room one afternoon. Marco had picked it up and brought it back to our staff apartment that evening, smiling kindly as he handed it back to her.
He put it in there, I realized, a wave of terror crashing over me. Marco wasn't just monitoring the house. He was monitoring me. He was monitoring everything my daughter brought near Alessandro.
Before I could process the horror of what I was holding, a soft knock sounded at the door of the office.
I gasped, instantly dropping the tiny bug into the open tin of buttons on my desk and covering the torn rabbit with a cloth napkin.
The door swung open. Marco Bellini stepped into the room.
He had removed his suit jacket, wearing a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He held a silver tray in his hands. On it sat a fresh amber glass bottle of Alessandro’s medication, along with a glass of water.
"Elena," Marco said smoothly, his eyes scanning the quiet room. "I thought I might find you here. Still working on the toy?"
"Yes, Mr. Bellini," I managed to say, forcing my voice to remain steady despite the violent pounding in my chest. "Just... fixing the seam."
Marco walked slowly toward the desk. He set the silver tray down right beside my sewing tin—inches away from where the hidden bug lay buried beneath the buttons.
"You are a good mother, Elena," Marco said softly, looking down at me. "Very dedicated. Very thorough."
"Thank you, sir," I replied, keeping my hands folded tightly in my lap so he wouldn't see them shaking.
Marco reached down and picked up the amber glass bottle from the tray. He turned it slowly in his fingers, the dark glass reflecting the yellow lamplight.
"Alessandro seemed... energetic today," Marco remarked, his tone casually inquiring, yet heavy with underlying tension. "He hasn't spoken that much in years. Did he say anything to you while you were at the park? Anything about the business? Or his personal affairs?"
"No, sir," I said quickly, looking him dead in the eye. "He only talked about the ducks. And the storybook."
Marco stared at me for three long, terrifying seconds. The room was so silent I could hear the slow ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway outside.
"Good," Marco finally said, setting the bottle down on the desk. "Because Alessandro is a very sick man, Elena. His mind is not what it used to be. Sometimes he imagines things. He thinks people are working against him. It’s important that we—the people who care for him—keep him calm. We wouldn't want him taking anything that might... upset his heart."
He tapped his finger against the amber bottle.
"I brought his evening dose up from the pharmacy chest," Marco added. "Since you are heading up to his suite with his night tea shortly, you can leave this on his nightstand."
"Of course, Mr. Bellini," I said.
Marco gave me a long, lingering look, then turned and walked silently out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The moment he was gone, I collapsed forward against the desk, gasping for air as if I had been underwater.
My eyes fell on the amber bottle Marco had left behind.
I picked it up. The prescription label read Baclofen - 20mg, a common muscle relaxant prescribed for spinal injury patients. But as I held the bottle up to the light, I noticed something strange.
Inside the dark glass, the pills weren't uniform. Most of them were round, matte-white tablets with a small dividing line across the center. But settled near the bottom of the bottle were three tablets that were slightly different—thinner, with a smooth, glossy coating and no dividing line.
My stomach churned.
I remembered what the triage doctor at the hospital had told me years ago when my mother was sick: Always check the imprint on your pills. If the shape or coating changes, do not take them.
I unscrewed the cap with trembling fingers. Using my sewing tweezers, I carefully extracted one of the glossy, unmarked pills from the bottom of the bottle. I wrapped it tightly in a piece of clean wax paper from my sewing kit and slipped it deep into the pocket of my apron.
May you like
Then, I picked up the tiny listening device from the button tin.
Marco was listening. He had been listening to everything for months. But he didn't know I had found it. And he didn't know that tonight, the game had changed.
